The Summer Palace (4 page)

The sun crawled upward, across the zenith, and made the long, slow descent toward the western horizon, and still Sword trudged onward, toward that lingering wisp of smoke. He saw no plants he recognized as edible, no open water, just endless grass and occasional unfamiliar weeds struggling up through the hard-packed earth. He sometimes glimpsed motion from the corner of his eye that he was fairly certain was small animals fleeing from him, but he could never locate them afterward. He did spot what appeared to be a rabbit dashing madly away, but then it seemed to vanish utterly in the grass. A moment's quick exploration turned up no evidence it had ever really been there at all, and he decided against looking further; the Uplanders might douse the fire he was tracking at any moment.

He had expected to see flocks of
ara
in the distance, as he had during his previous visit, but he did not.

His throat ached, his lips dried and cracked, his eyes stung from the wind. He could feel the skin on his hands and face drying out, but could think of nothing he might do to relieve the discomfort and lessen the damage. He knew there must be water somewhere, or the Uplanders couldn't live here, but he had no idea how to find it.

He walked the sun down, and dusk was thickening around him, stars spreading overhead, when he finally thought he could make out the tents of an Uplander camp far ahead. He tried to quicken his pace, but his reserves of energy were running very low after three long, weary days of running, climbing, and walking, and all he did was transform his steady walk into awkward stumbling. The thin, dry air seemed to snatch every drop of moisture away.

The light and his strength gave out almost simultaneously, and he collapsed in a heap on the rough grass, still a mile or more away from the camp. His throat was agonizingly dry, his belly painfully empty; he could not gather enough voice to call out. Instead he lay exhausted on the hard ground, and fell asleep, much as he had in the canyon.

He was awakened by something prodding him in the side; he rolled over to find two young men staring down at him, their faces invisible in the darkness, their expressions unreadable. They were little more than dark outlines against the starry splendor of the night sky.

One of the men had just poked him with the butt of a spear.

Sword tried to croak a greeting, but his throat was still much too dry. He forced himself to swallow, hoping to collect enough moisture to speak.

“Are you all right?” one of the young men said, speaking the Winterhome dialect of Barokanese with an odd, breathy accent that was both like and unlike the Winterhome lilt.

Sword nodded.

“Were you looking for us?” the other man asked, gesturing toward the orange glow of the Uplander camp.

Sword nodded again.

“We saw you silhouetted against the sunset, and when you fell, we came to see why,” he explained.

“Please take no offense at this question,” the first said. “Would you like us to help you?”

Sword nodded a third time.

The young man slung his spear on his back, and he and his companion
bent down to help Sword to his feet. It took a moment to find the strength to stand, but once he was upright, Sword was able to walk on his own, while the two Uplanders walked on either side, ready to catch him if he fell.

The darkness and his exhaustion kept them moving slowly, giving Sword time to look at his surroundings.

The plain stretched away in every direction; in the darkness it seemed to vanish into infinity and blend into the black sky above. The stars seemed closer and more numerous here than he had ever seen them before; he wondered if the thinner air had something to with that.

Despite the darkness he had no trouble finding his footing; the plain here was as flat and featureless as anywhere.

Ahead of them was the Uplander camp—a collection of perhaps two or three dozen tents of various sizes. Sword did not have enough light to see their true colors, but they were elaborately patterned in light and dark, and were a variety of shapes. In addition to the tents there were a few structures he could see as nothing but black outlines against the firelight. As they approached he could see that these were frameworks, with things suspended from them.

Half a dozen campfires burned between the tents, providing the golden glow that guided his captors, and several lanterns hung from tent-poles and frameworks here and there, as well. People were gathered around these fires and sitting or leaning beneath the lanterns; if any of the Uplanders had retired for the night, it wasn't obvious.

Sword's escorts had said he had been seen outlined against the sunset; could all these people have stayed up to see him brought into camp?

As they drew nearer, Sword could see a little more detail, of both the people in camp and the pair accompanying him. He could see that the two men wore hip-length vests over knee-length tunics, with peculiar headdresses framing their faces. All these garments were trimmed with feathers;
ara
plumes curled down behind every ear, while smaller feathers and bits of polished bone dangled from cords alongside each cheek. Their vests were patterned like the tents, and
now Sword could see that the patterns were made of black and white feathers. Pink crest-feathers trimmed their sleeves and adorned their sandals.

The others in the camp mostly seemed to be dressed in similar barbaric and lushly feathered fashion, though the women wore ankle-length skirts and had far more elaborate headdresses. Bones and feathers were everywhere.

Even in his exhausted state, Sword marveled at this attire; in Barokan, this profusion of
ara
feathers would represent gigantic wealth. He wondered why he had never heard stories of this ostentatious display.

The three of them reached the edge of the camp without incident, where Sword passed near one of those mysterious frameworks and saw that it was a rack that held several strips of drying meat—
ara
flesh, presumably. He had eaten that during his stay at the Summer Palace and found it edible, if a bit more strongly flavored than he liked.

He glanced more closely at the framework, and was startled to see that it was not made of wood, as he had assumed, but of bone—long, thin bones lashed together to form the structure. He didn't recognize the species that had produced the bones, but he guessed that those, too, came from the
ara.

Then they reached the camp proper, and Sword was surrounded by curious faces, many of them weathered, all of them tanned dark. No one spoke to him, though; instead his escort guided him to a central tent, larger than any of the others, where a tribal banner flew from a pole at one corner, just above a lantern that let Sword see that the banner displayed a golden crown and spear on a red background.

The tent was the largest Sword had ever seen, as large as most houses. A pair of tent-flaps hung open, pinned up on either side with clusters of
ara
feathers, and Sword was led directly inside, where he found half a dozen men seated on bright carpets, and one man sitting in a finely carved wooden chair, facing the entrance.

That chair, Sword realized, was almost the only wood in sight. The tent-poles were constructed of bones woven and lashed together; even
the spears most of the men carried had bone shafts. Even in his debilitated condition, Sword realized that this must be because wood was so rare, trees so scarce, in the Uplands. Wood probably had to be carried up the long trail from Winterhome. For this man to be sitting in a chair made of so precious a substance, he had to be very important indeed.

The walls of the tent were hung with thick opaque fabric—Sword was not sure whether the hangings were tapestries or more carpets. They were elaborately patterned, but there were no pictures, no scenes. Lamps hung from the ceiling, and the smell of burning fat was thick in the air.

The man in the chair was broad-shouldered and heavily built, his gray-streaked hair and beard worn long but neatly trimmed, combed, and curled. Pink and white
ara
feathers were woven into both hair and beard in a style that was like nothing Sword had ever seen before, but which managed to be elegant, almost beautiful.

The seated man watched silently as Sword approached, while the eyes of the other men in the big tent flicked back and forth between the two.

Sword knew nothing of Uplander customs or etiquette, but this was obviously either a priest or a chieftain of the clan or tribe; when his escorts stopped and stepped to either side, Sword dropped to one knee and bowed deeply. He kept his head down and waited for his host to speak—and tried to keep from fainting.

He had no idea whether this was the correct way to show respect, but he thought it should at least be recognized as an
attempt
at the proper respect.

He wondered whether the man was a priest, or a purely secular authority. Legend had it that the Uplanders
had
no priests, but Sword did not trust those legends. He could not feel the presence of any
ler
himself, but he knew the Uplands were not truly dead. Lore had told him that there were
ler
here, and Lore would have known, as part of his magic.

Still, if priests were as obviously in charge as this, the no-
ler
legends could hardly have gotten started. Until told otherwise, Sword decided he would consider this man a chieftain, but not a magician.

As he waited, kneeling unsteadily, he realized that the two who had brought him here were whispering to others, and word was being passed from man to man. One of the men rose and hurried to the side of the chieftain to convey whatever news had been brought; Sword could see that much from the corner of his downcast eye.

Finally, as he was beginning to wonder how much longer he could hold his position, and whether he had chosen the right one to begin with, the chieftain said, “They tell me you understand Barokanese. Can you speak it?” His voice was deep and rich, but he spoke with the same odd accent as the other two.

Startled, Sword looked up. “Of course, sir.” His voice cracked.

“You aren't a Hostman. You wear their garb, but you aren't one of them, are you?”

“No, sir.” He glanced at the faces around him, but could read nothing on them. He swallowed, trying to moisten his throat. “I am from Longvale, far to the north of Winterhome. If I have done anything to offend, I plead ignorance and humbly beg your pardon.”

Sword had intended this as mere polite rhetoric, and was horrified by the chieftain's reply.

“Offense?” he said. “Of course you have offended us. Do you honestly claim not to know what you have done? Surely you must know the nature of your crime.”

Sword blinked, and groped through his memory, trying to recall everything he had ever heard about Uplanders. At last, just as he sensed the chieftain beginning to shift impatiently, the obvious came to him.

“Oh,” he said. “I have come uninvited into the Uplands. The Uplands belong to Uplanders, not Barokanese.”

The chieftain nodded, sitting up straight with a pleased expression. “Yes. This land is ours, and ours alone.”

“I mean no harm, I swear by my soul.”

“Do you know the penalty for your intrusion?”

“No, sir.” Sword was not happy to hear that there
was
a set penalty.

“Enslavement,” the chieftain said, his tone not so much threatening
as satisfied. “Intruders here are bound and beaten, then given to the women to use as they please. You may well spend the rest of your life hauling water and tanning hides.”

That was hardly an appealing prospect. Sword thought swiftly, then swallowed and said. “If I may speak boldly, sir, I hope to convince you to pardon my crime—a crime I freely admit to, a crime I could hardly deny or expect you to overlook.”

“I confess to some curiosity about what madness brought you here,” the chieftain said, leaning back in his chair. “I can see you are no trader hoping to cut the Host People out of their share, since you have no pack. You bear a sword, which we have done you the honor of leaving in your possession, but an attacker would not have come alone and slept in the open. You seem to have no food, no water, no tools, and have done nothing to protect yourself from sun and wind beyond wearing that Hostman's hood, yet you do not speak like a madman or a suicide. You say you have an explanation—speak as boldly as you please, then, and tell us why you have come, and why we should not strip you naked and put you to work.”

Sword glanced around, then rose to his feet.

“Thank you,” he said. He paused.

Before he could say anything more a man handed Sword a cup of water, in response to a gesture from the chieftain; obviously, his hoarseness had been noticed. Sword accepted the cup without hesitation; he knew he could not afford to show any distrust of the Uplanders' hospitality. He drank the water down, then handed the cup back.

The water barely began to restore the moisture he had lost, but at least it took the edge off the pain in his throat. “Thank you,” he said again.

“Speak,” the chieftain ordered.

Sword swallowed, cleared his throat, and said, “I have noticed that you have allowed other Barokanese into the Uplands these past few years.” He saw the chieftain frown, and hastily continued, “I realize that even here in the Uplands it must be difficult to refuse the Wizard Lord anything—after all, you spend your winters in his domain. Still,
you have permitted him to build his Summer Palace, and to bring his household up to staff it. You let his people have free passage up and down the cliffs.”

“The clans in council have granted him the use of that one place,” the chieftain said. “He and his men are forbidden to roam more than a mile from the cliff's edge, or more than a mile north of his great house, or more than a mile south of the defile.”

“Yet surely even that must rankle, sir.”

The chieftain shrugged. “Our lands extend a thousand miles to the east. We can spare him his little sliver.”